Is this guy on drugs? And the wimps on the public Sage forum just suck up and kiss is ass for an answer like this.
I could give a crap if somebody 'busted their ass.' Would you go back into a restaurant with crappy food and crappy service just because the employees 'busted their ass' to provide that result?
Welcome to the real world. This isn't California Liberalism where everybody get's a participation trophy...
------------------
Dan Wilzoch Thanks for the ""lively"" feedback and conversation on this topic. We recognize that a systems change of this magnitude will introduce some frustrations. However, let me give you some information that may provide more perspective and reduce some of the negativity in this thread.
The Atlas system is now deployed fully across all of Sage in North America. Many business units have had it for a long time and have managed through the change very well. The most recent roll out was the final stage. So today, all employees, partners, and customers are using one system. With that change comes the inevitable pros and cons.
One of the big positives is the elimination of over 200 different systems used to serve our partners and customers. This is the primary reason why we're using the new Partner Portal vs. the old one, the new knowledgebase vs. the old one, etc. What you probably don't know is that each of those old systems, in every part of our business, required development, enhancement, maintenance and resources. And we had a backlog of fixes and enhancement requests for each one.
The old world and the old way of doing things was familiar, but still lacked many things and still was unsatisfactory for many of you. And it was impossible for us to address those things, because they existed across dozens of different systems.
Yes the new portal is less functional and has a poorer UI. Yes, we have many improvements to make across the entire system. Yes, SAP needs to wake up and understand usability. But I assure you, for every negative mentioned in this thread, there are many more benefits to you, to Sage, and to our customers.
Something else to consider while flaming in these forums is that literally hundreds of Sage employees worked their butts off on this project. Their dedication and commitment to making this successful was extraordinary. They were doing double work for months. They were here nights and weekends doing test conversions and data validation. After go-live, they tracked a series of metrics across our entire business to ensure any issues were addressed quickly. Data issues, defects, etc. were fixed in record time. Not an easy task in an enterprise SAP system.
While some aspects of the system (both for you and for our employees) are more difficult than before, the benefits to all of us greatly outweigh the short term frustration. We now have a 360 degree view of our customers. We see all their products, tickets, interactions, and opportunities. Across all product lines. We understand our customers better, we have much greater insight into partner activity, we can see what parts of our business are performing well or need improvement. In the past, we had some of that, but a much narrower view of our business
And I can tell you that we did spend hundreds of hours with partners evaluating and planning for change. Remember that we have thousands of business partners with varying interests and preferences and priorities. Still, we understand that you are key to our business. We apologize for the rough spots and hope you can balance those frustrations with all the positives. Ultimately you will have more opportunities to sell to customers, and less hassle in dealing with multiple administrative systems and touch points in Sage. Over time, we'll make improvements to these systems.
I spoke with our CIO and the project team over the weekend. Our plan was to leave the old portal turned off, as it has not been updated, the content there is not current, and it would introduce additional confusion if partners used outdated materials. Still, it was not difficult to turn back on so we accepted that risk.
My request to you is take a balanced view of the challenges. And never attack the motivation, integrity, or effort of Sage employees. It doesn't rise to the level of partnership that we all expect.